It eventually happens to all bloggers that become popular.  I’ve had several of these moments – you get feedback that causes you to take a step back and re-evaluate what you are doing an how you are doing.

My friend Alan Shimel had one of these the other day and has written a very thoughtful post on it.  If you know Alan, you can almost hear him saying this to you – that’s how lucid his self-reflection is.  His conclusion is 100% Alan.

“I actually do love blogging and expressing my opinion on these topics.  In many ways I was born to blog, I guess.  I have always been opinionated and eager to express my views.  Blogging is the perfect outlet.  To those of you who read my blog regularly, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  To those of you I might offend, my sincerest apologies, but I will not change what I write.  To those of you who think you are going to spin a story and believe by shouting it loud enough or saying it enough times, people will believe it, know that I am going to continue calling BS on it on here- for whatever it is worth.”

Keep it up my friend.

In August, I talked about a new feature that FeedBurner had created called “Networks”.   As part of this, I set up one of the first FeedBurner Networks – the Venture Capital Network.  It’s been really cool to watch how the network has evolved and grown – it now has 52 VC bloggers with a daily reach of 114k subscribers across the network.  FeedBurner has continued to roll new features into the network, including a detailed network landing page, ability to subscribe to the entire network or simply feeds in the network, and an OPML link for the network.  Look for more fun stuff soon.

As a result of playing around with my Dynamics of Information theme, I decided to create a few more networks.  The first one that I’m rolling out is the Colorado Entrepreneurs and Technology network as I want to try to understand if “source geography” (where the publishers are located, vs. where the subscribers are located) has any value.  I’ve invited a bunch of Colorado entrepreneurs and tech bloggers – if you want to join this network, are an entrepreneur or tech blogger living in Colorado, and didn’t get an invite, email me a request.  Of course, if you are interested in bloggers that are entrepreneurs or tech dudes in Colorado, check out the network.

The snow is finally sticking in Homer – what a beautiful day.  I’m looking at my web cam in Homer, AK from Keystone, CO where it’s also been snowing.

Winter (and ski season) is here.

My friend Stuart Chapman – a partner at Esprit Capital Partners in the UK – sent me a note about his new portfolio company WAYN (Where Are You Now?) which is a self-proclaimed “Web 2.0 Travel Site.”  It’s become very popular in Europe and – according to Stuart – is profitable and fantastically run.

WAYN’s core audience of Europeans regularly travel outside their own borders.  They are trying to determine how this maps to the US market where travel outside the country borders is much less prevalent.  While there’s a logical “outside the state mapping” (especially among adjacent red and blue states), it seems like the metaphor might be different . 

If you are a frequent traveler – especially to Europe or other parts of the world – take a look and – if you are inclined – leave feedback for Stuart here.

David Cohen has a nice summary of what happened at BarCamp Boulder up on the ColoradoStartups blog.  I didn’t attend (I needed to sit at home for the day and ponder the universe with Amy while petting my dogs).  There’s a nice BarCamp / Tech MeetUp thing developing in Boulder/Denver – the attendee list is has some really interesting folks on it.

I had my second opera experience last night at Opera Colorado’s Season Opening Gala performance of The Magic Flute.  I was blown away by my first opera experience in May and had high expectations for last night.  Even though I was completely exhausted from the week, I had a great time.

We arrived at about 5:30 with my folks, Dave Jilk and Maureen Amundson, Wendy Lea and Chris Byrne.  Wendy and Chris have become major opera fanatics in the past year (e.g. weekend in NY where they saw four operas in 30 hours), Dave and Maureen lost their opera virginity with us in May, and my dad will use any excuse to wear his tuxedo (“Brad – can I wear my tux to the basketball game?”)  Entertainingly, both Chris and I had brand new tuxes for the event which just happened to be exactly the same make and cut.

The pre-opera event – which included dinner and lasted until 8:15 – was magnificently done.  It was definitely a Denver crowd – and a beautiful one at that.  The food was excellent and the setting “magical.”

When we sat down to watch the opera, I quickly tried to read the synopsis (I hadn’t read the libretto in advance – bad me.)  It was incomprehensible to me – I couldn’t decide if it was me (I was too tired) or Mozart.  I decided to just settle in and roll with it. 

The production was superb.  The Ellie Caulkins Opera House is an excellent theater – extremely comfortable – and our seats were front and center (12 rows back – exactly in the middle.)  The Magic Flute is one of Mozart’s most well known operas and was completed near the end of his life, so it’s the culmination of a lot of his genius. I once again found myself entranced by the combination of things going on – the acting, singing, choreography, language (German), translation (subtitles on the seat backs), character development, and plot which – while relatively simple – requires some thought when it’s unfolding in another language as all the other things are going on simultaneously.

I was really tired from the week (note to self – opera late on Friday night is a challenge) so I found myself drifting near the end of the first act, especially during the slower segments.  A diet coke at intermission pepped me back up and I stayed engaged all the way through the second act (no snoring from me) which ended at 11:30.  Thankfully Amy drove home, so I slept in the car on the drive back from Denver.

Once again Opera Colorado did a great job.  I look forward to my next opera experience.

Ryan reminded me that we get to experience 11:11:11 twice today – which happens to be 11/11.  I’m looking forward to 2011.

Dion Hinchcliffe has an interesting post up on ZDNet titled Is IBM making enterprise mashups respectable?  Dion enumerates five styles of mashups: presentation, client-side data, client-side software, server-side software, and server-side data.  It’s a good segmentation and useful framework for describing integration layers between web services.

I’ve invested in over 50 angel deals in the past 12 years.  Several have been big winners for me, a few have done ok, and some have failed.  Many are still active – including several that I did before I started making venture capital investments in 1996.

Recently – a company I invested in 11 years ago – Harmonix Music Systems – was acquired by Viacom / MTV for $175 million.  The deal closed last week and the money has been flowing to the Harmonix shareholders.  And – it’s plenty – as Harmonix only raised $10 million over the life of the company.  The reactions from a few of the angels I helped recruit to the deal included “incredible outcome – I had forgotten I had shares in the company”, “Brad, are you sure you got the decimal point in the right place”, and simply “holy shit.”

I’m extremely proud of Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos – the co-founders of Harmonix.  Eran is a fraternity brother of mine – although he was more than four years younger than me so we never lived together.  Eran remembers approaching me when I was a judge for the MIT $10K competition the year that they entered – Eran recognized my name from our frat and after thinking “Hey – I know of that guy” approached me about getting together.  I remember the first time we hung out together and got a really crappy meal in Central Square in Cambridge at one of the omnipresent Indian places.  Eran and Alex regaled me of tales of the vision they had for creating musical environments and games for non-musicians.  They were incredibility creative, passionate, and infectious about their ideas.

I helped put together an angel round in 1995 for them.  It was modest – I think it was a total of about $500k.  Over the next few years, they did a couple of small financings – although none of them from traditional VCs – and raised around $10m.  Eran, Alex, and team regularly created new products, got key distribution deals with major players, and chipped away at building a business.  They sent out an investor letter periodically updating everyone one what was happening.  Occasionally I’d get a call from one of the angels that was in the round asking how things were going.  Time passed.

In 2005, they released their newest product – Guitar Hero.  It was a monster hit.  Suddenly, Harmonix went from a sleeply little company that had been ambling along for a decade to a hot up and comer.  MTV swooped in and grabbed the shiny nugget just as the Guitar Hero franchise was picking up speed (if you loved Guitar Hero, then check out Guitar Hero 2) – it’s a perfect fit for Viacom / MTV’s latest new media push and their demographic.

I expect to see great things from Eran, Alex, Harmonix, and MTV over the next few years.  Congrats guys and nicely done!